Football: Dykes acknowledges after WSU loss, `We have no confidence right now’

For four minutes Saturday afternoon, the monsoon rain and crucial mistakes of the week before at Oregon were forgotten. The Cal football team took the opening kickoff and moved quickly to the Washington State 5-yard line.

Then running back Daniel Lasco fumbled the ball away, and even the sunny skies above Memorial Stadium couldn’t help the Golden Bears in what became a 44-22 blowout loss in front of 44,682 fans.

“When you are a very fragile team that doesn’t have a lot of confidence, it probably has an impact on you,” coach Sonny Dykes said of the first of five Cal turnovers. “We have no confidence right now.”

A season that began with so much optimism now seems hopelessly headed in the wrong direction.

The Bears (1-4, 0-2 Pac-12) lost their ninth consecutive game to an FBS opponent, with the much-improved Cougars (4-2, 2-1) snapping an eight-game losing streak in the series.

I hate to break it to the Dykes haters, but fumbles derive from mental weakness, and that mental weakness derives from Tedford’s destruction of the program.

I’m not a big Buh fan, and if he got fired tomorrow I’d lose no sleep. But until we can clean house on the player personnel side and get rid of the quitters and fundamentally weak players on this team, things won’t change with any coach.

I think I have #firebuh trending on Twitter. I will lose sleep as long as he continues to destroy this program. STOP MAKING EXCUSES! It was WASHINGTON STATE! Who got boat raced in front of their fans by the GD Furds. Buh- yet another Stunfraud sxpatriot (see Esquer, David) with pumped-up credentials who is an abject failure. This has all the indicators of an epic fail hire by Sandy. The house cleaning may have to reach all the way to the top.

And could someone bytchslap Justin Kutcher? Yeah, I know he’s like their 100th string guy at Fox, but the chucklefest he had with James “Master” Bates (an OU Sooner who no one remembers), talking about “staying away from all the hemp in Berkeley” and other inane, lame slams on the greatest public university on the planet are old & tired.

Actually The Wisdom Cow, your smug “I told you so” attitude is one of the most outrageous things I’ve ever read here. For example, your post during the game thread: “I’m sorry, but as this one continues, the defense and penalty concerns I wrote of right after the Dykes hire continue. This really needs to change.” You’ve hated Dykes since the day he was hired, and you seem to take more joy in rubbing the team’s struggles in everyone’s face than you would in a winning football program. I don’t know if you hate him because he’s from the south/Texas – and you apply the same bigoted prejudices that most Californians apply to southerners, or because you think Vince Lombardi should have been reincarnated and hired by Cal because we’re the most attractive coaching destination in the country (again, delusional), or what. But it’s clear that if Coach Dykes said “blue,” you’d say “red.”

Now, if you read what I said, it was not that Tedford caused the fumbles. I said mental weakness causes the fumbles. And then I said the mental weakness of this team – the fumbles, the unwillingness to play hurt, the constant mental mistakes – derives from Tedford’s destruction of this program over the past few years. Coach Dykes can’t just wave a magic wands and give these kids the mental toughness that they clearly don’t have today and may never have. He can try to build it into those willing to do the work. But until will purge this program of the mentally weak players who don’t want to put out on the practice field and in the classroom, every day, we’re going to be losers. And that’s going to take time. And before you misinterpret that, I’m not saying all the players are mentally weak. But a lot of them are.

So with all due respect, given that you’re someone who has done nothing but s__t all over Coach Dykes from day one (as far as I know; apologies if I missed the posting where you had something positive to say about him), I value your opinion not one bit. Granting yourself the title of “Wisdom” doesn’t make you wise. It makes you smug and arrogant. Just my two cents.

Like Pappy Waldorf a half century earlier, Jeff Tedford turned a losing program into a winner. Sadly, also like Waldorf, what had gone up went back down as his era went on. Really, since WW II there have only been two periods you could call great or very good, eras–the early Waldorf era & the early Tedford era. Several other coaches turned out a winner or two but then fled immediately to greener pastures.

Unlike the difficult circumstances faced when Tedford came on board, the Dykes hire came at a time when Cal pays a competitive salary & has outstanding facilities. The scary thing about this season is, there is no sign of a fired up team under a new coach . Tedford’s 1st season started with a bang, & included Big wins over UCLA & Stanford. Harbaugh’s 1st season at Stanford included upsets of USC & Cal. Hope I’m wrong, but this season shows no sign of anything. Well, to be fair, Dykes/Franklin do get credit for the play of freshman QB Goff.
.
Dykes, not Tedford must bear the responsibility for the very bad football this season.

Very early last week I predicted Wazzu 52 Cal 28 – margin of predicted victory = 24. Actual Final Score Wazzu 44 Cal 22 – actual margin of victory = 22. I’d liek to now hear from all the polyannas thinking Cal is good and laying down many excuses for their horrible D an admission that you were wrong.

The trasformation to conference doormat is complete for Cal. To become the doormat, you need to replace the former doormat. We can all agree WSU was! the doormat from the mid 2000s to 2011. The new dootmat (actually since mid last year) is the California Golden Bears. When you are the doormat, tunrovers are plentiful, bad coching persists (check with Buh and possibly Dykes), frequent routs occur(check, checkm check), and you have difficulty recruiting good/great players (understandable). And with the woeful Cal AD at the helm – this isn’t changing for at least 3 more years.

Look at the schedule and the lousy team on the field. 1-11 is likely. 2-10 is a stretch goal (and eve nthen it would be a big upset to beat Colorado on the road or Oregon St. at home).

Holmoe era redux. Looking beyond what will be a horrendous season lies the ugly reality of recruiting quality players. Coach, your job is to instill confidence in your players, the Bear Nation, and those prospects looking at Cal. Why would Joe Mixon pick Cal under these circumstances? Sonny, you need to get your coaching house in order, enough good ole boys.

CalBearister, you either are lying, have memory issues, or got very selective with which of my posts you have read. I aired my concerns over Dykes early, which were defense and penalties, but I did acknowledge offensive pluses (while lamenting the death of the pro-set offense).

Instilling confidence (and motivation) is the job of the coach. That is wrong of Dykes to blame Tedford’s recruiting. Tedford recruited good players and then would have good games or really horrible games – that’s a lack of motivation, not talent. Look at what Harbaugh did in one year with the same group of players – that’s good coaching. I didn’t think Dykes was the right hire when he came on board but reserved judgement. All these injuries point to a lack of training, not bad luck. The Pac12 is not Louisiana Tech, and Dykes didn’t have a great record there. But I knew there was going to be trouble when one of the first things Dykes said was “its going to take a long time to turn this around.” He was already looking for excuses before he even started. Does anybody notice the many players Tedford sent to the NFL?

Agree with Skaka. The key to the future of this team is attracting quality players like Joe Mixon. Why would Mixon or any other three-to-five-star player come to Cal?
Offensive specialists want to win, which Cal doesn’t do. Defensive players want to be part of a first-class defensive program. That ain’t what Cal is offering, not under Sonny.